Elie Wiesel - Night FULL TEXT

Holy Land. Please understand my deep and total commitment to
Israel: if you could remember what I remember, you would understand.
Israel is the only nation in the world whose existence is
threatened. Should Israel lose but one war, it would mean her end
and ours as well. But I have faith. Faith in the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and even in His creation. Without it no action
would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference,
the most insidious danger of all. Isn't that the meaning of Alfred
Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear of war a shield against war?
There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be
done. One person—a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a
Martin Luther King Jr.—one person of integrity can make a difference,
a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is
in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is
hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all
these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone;
that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled
we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on
ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I
have done with his years. It is in his name that I speak to you and
that I express to you my deepest gratitude as one who has
emerged from the Kingdom of Night. We know that every moment
is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share
them would mean to betray them.
Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those
who need us desperately.
Thank you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the
Nobel Committee. Thank you, people of Norway, for declaring
on this singular occasion that our survival has meaning for
mankind.
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